Live In The Feast

Today’s guest is Blair Enns. Blair is the founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training organization for creative professionals. Blair is also the author of two books, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity.

While most of Blair’s work is centered around sales and teaching people how to sell, he’s an expert in the specific difficulties creative people have with selling.

A defining moment in Blair’s life was when he left the city and moved his young family to a remote mountain village in British Columbia — a nine-hour drive from Vancouver. He left his job at a design firm and started the initial iteration of Win Without Pitching.

Blair pushes himself to lead by example, following the same principles he talks about in his books, and in his consulting practice. He understands that he has a responsibility to sell to his clients the way he would want them to sell to him.

Blair is currently working on a second edition of Pricing Creativity, and has also started working on several new book projects.

In this episode Blair talked about:

• How removing distractions from his life enabled him to build his business the way he wanted to.
• Pricing on value, and how to think about pricing in general.
• Why you have to master the conversation before you can master selling.

Main Takeaways

• It’s hard to have a value conversation with a prospective client if you don’t think in terms of value yourself.
• Go into conversations with clients without any presuppositions about what their problems are, what the solution might be, or what the cost of the solution might be.
• Creatives have to learn how to have conversations about value, and improve their conversational skills so they can get out of the “presentation business”.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Win Without Pitching
• The Win Without Pitching Manifesto
• Pricing Creativity
• Blair Enns on Twitter
• Blair Enns on LinkedIn

Stay in touch

• Full show notes
• Ask Rezzz Podcast
• Feast
• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Today’s guest is James Rose. James operates Content Snare, which helps digital and creative agencies save time, increase profitability, and provide an awesome experience to their clients by streamlining the content collection process.

Previously, James ran a software and web development company where he quickly figured out the key to success was always having a good process in place for whatever his team was working on.

James started hearing from other agencies that one of their biggest bottlenecks was collecting content from their clients. It seemed like a problem he could fix, and Content Snare was born.

With the mantra of simplification through processes, James has refined his business processes, over time, to help streamline operations and build new relationships. He spends a lot of time experimenting with customer acquisition models and new partnerships.

In this episode James talked about:

• Understanding your client without any preconceived notions about what their problem is.
• Why he doesn’t use “goals”, in the traditional sense, and how he operates his business instead.
• The value of implementation over consumption and analysis.

Main Takeaways

• You never know who will be using your product or for what purpose, so be receptive toward people who are using your product in different ways and try to build off the niches in which they operate.
• Sales goals are great if you have predictable channels, but if you don’t, work toward enhancing your existing partnerships and searching out new relationships.
• If you’ve done your due diligence and think there’s a path that will help grow your business, then go for it. Stop reading about the same topics over and over again, and make a move to apply your knowledge.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
• Content Snare

Stay in touch

• Full show notes
• Ask Rezzz Podcast
• Feast
• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Today’s guest is Jared Gold. Jared is cofounder of Website By Tonight, the easiest, most affordable way to launch a simple and professional website.

Jared started off in web design by doing websites for local practitioners and friends. Over time, he realized he was getting a lot of referrals, and a lightbulb went off as he realized how he could scale his business.

Though he didn’t necessarily think about niching down initially, his main client base was made up of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs, and the sites he worked on ranged from redesigns to greenfield projects.

In order to scale his business, Jared build processes to help him screen clients and make sure they’re a good fit for him and his team. This takes a lot of time. But because his service is so high touch - letting the client be in on the entire design process - he found it a critical piece of ensuring that the clients he works with get what he’s doing and aren’t going to disrupt the process.

Jared has built a solid team to help deliver his unique website design service — one that lets the client help design via screen share.

In this episode Jared talks about:

• How he screens clients to make sure they are a good fit for his business
• The challenges he faces working directly with clients and letting them in on the design process
• How Jared set up a good system for guiding clients to the finish line and how he hopes to improve on it

Main Takeaways

• People need to earn the right to work with you as a professional. If they are too demanding or too detailed oriented, it will be harder to deliver the product you promised them.
• Set client expectations and boundaries up front. People who work with you need to know what they will be getting and how much access to you they will get.
• Put a process in place to help move you projects along swiftly. There are a lot of tools out there that can help your business run smoothly.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Website By Tonight
• Meal Tribes
• Squarespace

Stay in touch

• Full show notes
• Ask Rezzz Podcast
• Feast
• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Today’s guest is Mark Asquith. Mark is the co-founder of Rebel Base Media, which creates technology and solutions that help podcasters to find, amplify, and build influence around their unique voice.

Mark has worked a variety of jobs over the years. Self-described as “wandering through life,” he ended up finding his way to podcasting. He eventually founded Podcast Websites, which eventually expanded into Rebel Base Media and several sub-brands.

Though he generally sees himself as a tech founder that just happens to create solutions for podcasters, Mark truly loves connecting like-minded people. In the beginning he was hesitant to share everything he knew on his podcast. But he realized that having an open-source community with a shared knowledge-base was really where he wanted to be professionally.

Today, Mark helps podcasters become true audio influencers through coaching, marketing strategies, and helping them refine their brand. He focuses on connecting people and using trust and loyalty to help his clients consistently grow a fan-base and monetize their podcasts.

In this episode Mark talks about:

• How being an audio influencer can help position you as an expert
• How you can leverage every episode as a lead magnet
• How to get over your fears and launch your show

Main Takeaways

• Becoming an audio influencer puts you in a position to take full monetary advantage of your audience. Even if you’re small, sponsors will show up if you have dedicated listeners.
• Getting your listeners to channel transfer (engage with non-podcast content) is critical for becoming an audio influencer and building a community around your podcast.
• Get over yourself. No one cares how you sound, no one cares if your podcast isn’t perfect. The most important step in building a podcast that people want to listen to is starting it.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Rebel Base Media
• Podcast Websites
• Mark Asquith on Twitter

Stay in touch

• Full show notes
• Ask Rezzz Podcast
• Feast
• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Today’s guest is Mike Kelly. Mike is the co-founder (with his wife, Erin) of MemberVault, a digital home for your best free content, paid offers, memberships, and one-to-one services.

Mike is a builder. From a young age he loved building with wood, Legos, and whatever else he could get his hands on. This passion for creating led him to become an independent developer and host of a (since discontinued) podcast, “The Grumpy Developer.”

The idea for MemberVault stemmed from his wife’s dissatisfaction with the online course tools that were available. Being boxed into the traditional companies and plugins, Mike thought that he could create something better for his wife’s needs.

Three years later, Mike and Erin are still working together on MemberVault, adding new users and features all the time.

Today, MemberVault houses content for their users, giving them tools to convert followers to paying customers without being pushy, impersonal, or formulaic.

In this episode Mike talks about:

• How to engage your customers and learn more about who they are and how to get them to the next step to work with you
• Figuring out your business’s KPIs and why more leads isn’t always the best solution
• What’s wrong with the traditional sales funnel system
• Working with your spouse and striking a good balance between work and home life

Main Takeaways

• People, if given the option, would rather view all your content, look at your products in depth, and choose which ones to buy instead of being lead step-by-step and put in a “waiting period” before being able to move ahead with the purchase.
• Figuring out incentives, rewards, and analyzing your own way of doing things is crucial in getting people to convert.
• Sales funnels have become impersonal, formulaic, cold, and pushy. However, building relationships with customers is far more important.
• Working with your spouse can be difficult if you don’t have separate ownership areas. Split your responsibilities and let each person own their sector and be the final call on that subject.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• MemberVault
• The Grumpy Developer (Podcast)

Stay in touch

• Full show notes
• Ask Rezzz Podcast
• Feast
• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Today’s guests (yes, two guests!) are Rob and Kennedy from ResponseSuite, a survey app with built-in marketing features designed to get more of your customers buying more of your products, more often.

Special offer: Get a 14-day free trial and a one-on-one coaching call with Rob and Kennedy by vising responsesuitedeal.com/feast.

As you’ll hear in this episode, Rob and Kennedy are entertainers who happened to become entrepreneurs. Rob is a master at psychology, body language, and reading people, which resulted in a comedy show where he reads people’s minds. Kennedy comes from a background in magic and hypnosis. Together, they co-founded ResponseSuite and found a way to leverage their unique skill set in the business world.

One thing’s for sure — Rob and Kennedy are passionate about surveys! And that passion came directly from scratching their own itch, as the saying goes.

After years of CSV files, spreadsheets, and separate email lists, Rob and Kennedy decided it was time to find a better solution for segmenting customers, and getting the information they needed. But they weren’t happy with what was on the market at the time, so (as is the case for most entrepreneurial types) they decided to build their own, and ResponseSuite was born.

While their software is designed to help entrepreneurs, it also serves another purpose: it provides a revenue stream that allows them to continue doing what they love: performing.

In this episode Rob and Kennedy talk about:

• How their background prepared them to build ResponseSuite and what they learned along the way.
• How the brain works and how to hack it with surveys.
• How their app saves times, gathers more data, and automates important aspects of marketing.
• Listening to your customers and using that to innovate and iterate on your product.

Main Takeaways

• Surveys are a great way to gather the right kind of data from your customers or target audience.
• Having prospects fill out a survey puts their minds into an engaged mode, making them far more likely to purchase or interact with a call-to-action at the end.
• The information gleaned from a survey allows product owners to do “mass personalization,” which goes a long way in today’s market.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• ResponseSuite
• ResponseSuite on Twitter

Stay in touch

• Full show notes
• Ask Rezzz Podcast
• Feast
• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Today’s guest is Andrew Askins. Andrew is the founder of Krit, a startup turned app design and development studio that helps other startups turn their ideas into realities.

While still in school at University of South Carolina, Andrew had an opportunity to join an accelerator program for his SaaS app. Though he was able to get it off the ground and attract a few thousand users, he starting burning out.

At the same time, he and his team were consulting with a few companies and it became something they enjoyed enough to go all-in. They started as a catchall digital marketing agency but realized after a couple of years that they needed to niche down and find their true sweet spot - working with startups.

The decision to pivot from startup to consultants was not an easy one. There was a lot of doubt along the way and it took landing a big project to finally feel a little more at ease with the decision.

Though he and his team kept it simple to start with, they’ve evolved both their business and their messaging over time to encompass their target market as well as the strengths of the team.

At the end of the day, Andrew’s goal is to put people first in his business. And a big part of that is creating a transparent business model with clear values.

There’s a lot going for Andrew these days, from brining on the company’s first new hires, to refining their systems and processes, as well as launching a new info product.

In this episode Andrew talks about:

• Letting go of a startup he’d spent nearly two years building.
• Keeping things simple when you’re starting out.
• Understanding the difference between clients who aren’t a good fit and those who just don’t fit with your primary messaging.

Main Takeaways

• How you communicate what you do matters. Be sure you are creating the right narrative around your business and value proposition.
• To have a successful startup, each part of the business should understand and care about the other parts. Development should care about design, design should care about sales, etc.
• Find clients who are equally as invested in you as you are with them. It can make or break a product.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Krit
• Amy Hoy
• Andrew’s Newsletter
• Talk Triggers by Jay Baer
• Andrew on Twitter

Today’s guest is Joe Workman. Joe is a Rapid Weaver developer and the founder of Weaver’s Space. He also runs the Weaver’s Space Online Conference.

Joe started using Rapid Weaver - a Mac App that lets you create a website on your local computer and then publish directly to your server - in 2006. When he set out to start a real estate business with his friend (Joe is a self-described serial entrepreneur) they built the site on Rapid Weaver. Throughout that project, Joe ended up building several custom stacks (plugins).

Over time, people in the developer community urged Joe to start selling some of his stacks and eventually he started developing full-time. While Joe did do some consulting and client work early on, he ultimately found creating products more rewarding.

Joe has been running his business for more than a decade and has made it a priority to productize and streamline. The ability to replicate his work and automate as much as possible has been a key element to his success as a solo shop owner.

In order to survive the normal ups and downs of entrepreneurship, Joe is working on diversifying his revenue streams and looking for new things to try with his business. He’s also preparing for a new release of Total CMS, one of his main products.

In this episode Joe talks about:

• Creating products instead of doing client work.
• Helping other freelancers grow and refine their own businesses through community building.
• Ensuring you have a safety net to withstand the ebbs and flows of business.
• The benefits of being strong and unwavering with your prices.

Main Takeaways

• Find your people first. Be part of the conversation and community before trying to create and sell products or services.
• Scratching your own itch is a great way to productize the work you’re already doing and is likely to meet the needs of others as well.
• Building community and relationships is important even if you aren’t doing client work. In a product-based business you still have to build credibility and a reputation.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Joe Workman
• Weaver’s Space
• Weaver’s Space Online Conference
• Blue Tick
• Total CMS

Today’s guest is Lianna Patch. Lianna is a copy writer, speaker, and the founder of Punchline Copy, a copywriting agency focused on injecting humor into brand copy. Lianna also runs Snap Copy, an on-demand copywriting service.

It took some time for Lianna to find her niche. She’d been writing copy for seven years and was finding herself unhappy with her business. At the same time she was also starting to do stand-up comedy and joined a copywriting mastermind group. She felt the group “gave her permission” to incorporate her improv work with her copywriting and she’s been at it ever since.

Lianna started niching down her market by simply writing the copy for her own website. She didn’t do a bunch of customer interviews or outreach, she just wrote without inhibition (and probably with a few drinks) and let her positioning grow organically from there.

Throughout the life of her business, she’s gone from being mostly retainer-based to project-based, which grew from the types of projects and clients she found herself working with most often. Currently, her business has grown through word of mouth via podcasts and speaking gigs, but she plans to put more marketing systems in place in 2019.

Additionally in 2019, Lianna plans to finalize and release a course she’s working on and doing more to productize her services.

In this episode Lianna talks about:

• The parallels between good comedy and good copywriting.
• Transitioning between a retainer-based and project-based business models.
• Creating a better customer experience by writing copy that shows you understand your client and care about their needs.

Main Takeaways

• Creating clear positioning ensures that you target the right kinds of clients and that you don’t spend a lot of time assuaging the concerns of the wrong ones.
• Build a revenue model that works for you and that you are comfortable with. Don’t force retainer-based clients if it’s not what’s best for you and your business.
• Writing shorter sentences and punctuating them with animated gifs or emojis are an easy way to make your writing more approachable.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Punchline Copy
• Punchline Copy Twitter
• Snap Copy
• Joanna Wiebe
• Youpreneur
• Curtis McHale

Today’s guest is Troy Dean. Troy is a podcaster, speaker, father, and the founder of WP Elevation. Through WP Elevation, Troy helps WordPress consultants build and scale their businesses.

A self-proclaimed “horrible passenger,” Troy started his own business because he wanted to be in control of his financial future, though the actual events leading to WP Elevation were a bit erratic.

After wandering a bit aimlessly in his 20s, Troy stumbled into voice-over work and built a website to promote himself. People liked the site and started asking him to build one for them, thus beginning his entrepreneurial journey.

One of Troy’s strengths as a business owner is getting to the heart of what his clients truly need. Over the years he’s developed a framework designed to elicit that information and better understand what’s most important.

Troy now trains other WordPress developers and designers on how to build their business by niching down and getting really good at client communication through his mastermind group and training courses.

Troy is currently working on expanding his audience to other freelancers without abandoning his core audience of WordPress developers, while also putting a big emphasis on live events and testing his training.

In this episode Troy talks about:

• The delicate balance between being creative, delivering for clients, and managing the relationship.
• Asking clients questions and going deep and wide on the responses.
• Creating your value proposition, being bold, and having a unique stance in the market.

Main Takeaways

• One of the best value adds you can deliver for clients is to help them better understand what they need, which may not be the same as what they think they want.
• Learning to speak your client’s language is an essential way to let them know you are truly listening and have their best interests in mind.
• If you don’t niche down and find a market on which to focus, you end up constantly taking broad strokes and trying to please everyone all the time, which never works out well.

Important Mentions in this Episode

• WP Elevation
• Brendon Burchard
• Dan Kennedy
• Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Troy’s Proposal Template
• Troy on Twitter
• Digital Mavericks Facebook Group